Sully's Whorehouse 

     You know, I never really did figure out just exactly how this
whole thing got started.  Shucks, this whole experience was crazy
enough to fill 3 books, let alone one.  However, Sully insists I 
write it down, so I guess I'd better think of something.  If I don't
finish this, Sully will never let me get any peace.  I guess the best
place to start is that fateful morning at Saint George's' Hospital.  

     I had just completed my Medical degree, and was kind of proud
of that shiny new License to Practice medicine from the state board
of heath that hung in my locker.  It was, pardon the pun, a dead 
morning in the ER.  Seriously.  A broken leg, and a DOA drug 
overdose, and a kid with his hand stuck in Mom's heirloom Cookie
jar.  No sweat.  I didn't even have any sweat stains on my nice red
Greens.  (Honest.  We used Bright red surgical greens in the ER.  
This was back before everyone started using them.  A couple of real
wits from purchasing saddled us with them, saying something about
blood not showing up as well.  Seesh). 

     Anyway, there I was, playing pinochle with the nurses, trying
to talk them into strip poker.  And, as usual, I was both losing
my shirt and getting turned down by them.  So much for those Dime 
store novels where the lovely nurse falls for  the handsome young
doctor.  I was just about to give up and scrounge up one of those
self same novels when suddenly there was a squeal of tires from the
ambulance entrance.  All eyes turned to the doors,  just as they were
kicked open by this wild eyed gentleman.  He was about 50, silver
hair, smoking a cigar and carrying an assault rifle/ grenade launcher
combo.  Everybody else, of course, dove for solid cover when they saw
his impressive armament.  I, however, displayed my usual distressing
lack of sense/Incredible courage by simply standing up and asking
him if I could help him.

     "You David Rose?"

     "I might be.  Why do you ask?"     
     
     "Got a wounded man in the van.  Refuses to be treated except
by the great Doctor Rose, to use his words."

     I stopped listening to the person after the word man, and I 
shouldn't have.  If I had, well, I guess that would have been a whole
different ball game.  However, I just grabbed my medical bag and 
rushed out to the van. Second big mistake. 

     As I flung open the door saying "O.K., where my Patient,"
my last coherent impression was that of a fist the size of Miami,
covered with gold rings, hurtling right at my forehead.

     Hurt was indeed the operative word.  I swam upward into a pool
of fuzzy light, with my head pounding so hard that I knew I must be 
dead.  This fact was confirmed by the heavenly vision floating
before my eyes -Two king size Mammalian protrubances, sheathed
in see through black nylon.  Something cold and wet was placed on my
forehead and I slipped back to peaceful oblivion.

     When I came to again, I found  myself quite alive and flat on my
back in a cozy little white painted bedroom.  It took an eternity
to move, but finally I got upright and stumbled over to the window.
Looking out, I found that where ever it was that they had taken me,
it was in the old uptown area.  I came to this conclusion because
the other buildings on the block were all old 3-5 story brownstones,
that looked like they had been standing since the thirties or so.  
Right about then, there was a knock on the door, and the sound of the
latch turning.  I spun around to see a very well endowed blonde 
enter, wearing a low cut red silk dress that enhanced just enough
to make you want to see what was under it.

     "Dr. Rose?" she asked.

     "Last time I checked.  Are you the person who arranged to have
me brought here?"

     "Yes, and no.  If you would follow me, I'll show you to your 
patient."

     She escorted me down the hall to a bedroom, in which resided
my patient.  A short  gentleman, bout 5'4", 150, balding thin black
hair and a really beady eyed expression.  Just as I took in my 
medical bag sitting on the bedside table, my patient let loose with
a verbal barge that instantly identified him. 

     "Johnathin Sully, you old idiot, what in hell are you doing 
kidnapping up and coming new doctors to treat your broken limbs??"
     "Aw, put a cork in it, willya, ya cockeyed sawbones, and set 
this damn thing??"
     
     I grabbed what I was going to need and continued to trade 
gratuitous insults back and forth as I set his leg and put a cast on
it.  When that was done, I gave him a sedative and pain killers,
grabbed my bag and planned to exit the building.  Except that I got
intercepted as soon as I set foot out the bedroom door.
     
     "Dr. Rose?  Will john be all right?"

     It seemed the lady in red had been hovering outside the door 
while I worked on Sully.     
     
     "Yes, and no.  He'll survive, but when I take that cast off of 
him, I'm going to kill him for this!!"

     "Don't do that, Dr. Rose"
     
     "Why not?"
     
     "Because then I would have to kill you.  Would you feel more  
comfortable discussing this over coffee?"

     The sudden change of subject left me totally off balance,
so I just sort of blindly followed her back to the  kitchen.  I sat
down at the table as she busied herself pouring two cups of coffee,
and seated herself across from me.

     "Why would you have to kill me, Ms ..."

     I let the sentence trail off, fishing for information.
She gladly filled it.

     "That is MRS., Dr.  Rose.  Mrs. Patricia Sully.  And as far as 
the why, well, It should be obvious. I happen to really care for my 
husband and would not let his death go unavenged."

     "OOPS.  Excuse me for a moment, while I remove my foot from my 
mouth.  You see, I always sort of expected Sully would have been a 
perennial bachelor, or spouse he would have gotten along with about
the way the Honeymooners did.  Just how did he wind up with someone
like you, while I am still searching for Ms Right, with no results??"

     "By the same token, I am curious as to why John wanted you to 
come down here.  From the way you two swore at each other, I assume
that you have known each other for some time.  I'll make you a deal.
I'll tell you my history if you'll tell me yours."

     Which is probably as good a place in this narrative as any to 
explain it to you, the reader.  John Sully and I first met back in 
elementary school.  In fourth grade as a mater of fact.  I had always
been fairly precocious child, eager to learn, and always willing
to show off what I knew.  This did nothing to endear me to those 
other children my age, and when you added in the fact that I was just
no good at even the most simplest game like dodge ball or T-ball,
well I did not have very many friends.   That was about the time we 
had to move.  I wound up in a school with both an educationally
gifted and emotionally handicapped programs, and in both of them at 
the same time.   That was the time I first met Sully.  He was in the
emotionally handicapped program too, mainly because he was the sort
of smart alec that no other teacher would put up with in their class
room.  So he wound up in the emotionally handicapped program.  It was
the only way to get him out of their hair.  So, of course, he got 
seated next to me, and well, the rest is history.

     One thing you've got to understand.  By the time I first met 
Sully, I was willing to sell my soul to the devil to have a real best
friend.  In the eyes of the other kids, I was some sort of freak,
or at best, a basket case, because I was so poor at the games we 
played.  So, of course, I tried to be friendly to my new deskmate.
It turned out that we had a common interest in Green Arrow comics,
and in looking at each  other's collection, we made the discovery
that our tenements were back to  back to each other.  After that,
it was 'Kitty, Bar The Door.'  The stunts we pulled are still 
whispered in hushed tones amongst the halls of P.S. 95.  Like the 
time we caught the principal and his secretary in what you would call
a "compromising Position," or the time we filled the Swimming pool
with Lime Jell-O.  Shoot, we carried that reputation, and lived up to
it, all the way through 'till we graduated from high school.  Sully
would come up with these wild and outrageous ideas, and then I would
pick them apart, and we'd come up with a fool proof idea.  Then, 
invariably, I would suffer from an acute attack of morals and cold
feet, but Sully would drag me along anyway.  Between his street 
smarts and my book smarts, well, we set a mark that practical
jokers and pranksters have been trying to meet ever since.  I must
admit that the saddest day of my life was the day that I moved out to
the dorms at Columbia, when I thought I was saying my final good-byes
to John Sully.

     Patricia's past was as different from mine as night is to day.
Raised on a midwest farm, with a semi-alcoholic and incestuous
father, she managed to acquire enough capitol to catch a bus to the
big city at the tender age of fourteen.  She arrived here full of 
great and wonderful dreams of becoming rich and famous, only to be 
snapped up fresh off the bus by one of those vile slime that prey on
young girls like her.  And so she became just one more piece placed
for sale on the street.  It was there that she meets John Sully,
and, despite the always semi-professional relationship between them,
they fell in love, and eventually he rescued her from her life on the
street.  Of course, as the street was the only life they really knew,
they found the next best thing, namely, a whorehouse.  Pat got work
as a maid, and John as a barkeep, and slowly they made their way up 
the ranks until, with the passage of the Davis act, they were ready
to strike out on their own.

     Our conversion was cut short at that point by the sound of a 
pager coming from her decotage.  She asked to be excused, explaining
that it was shift change time, and she had a business to run.  I 
asked if I could tag along, and she agreed.  On our way down, she 
explained how they had bought this building from the old Madam, and
had turned it into a fairly profitable brothel in its own right.
We toured the Main floor rooms, where they catered to the upper 
classes of society, and then down to the  basement, and what she 
jokingly referred to as the "bargain basement", which was actually
the main section of the house.  It was here that the girls were 
priced such that they were easily accessible to the common Joe, but
not so low as to attract undue attention.  While in the upper rooms,
a girl would make her client feel special and cared for, down here
the girls, while still making an individual feel important, were much
more concerned with volume.  Indeed, there was one girl who did 
nothing but $10 dollar blowjobs all day long, but did so many that
she was quite well off.  It was then that Pat excused herself 
explaining that with Sully in bed with his leg broken, she was going
to have to do the work of two.  I headed back up to the master 
bedroom to check upon Sully.  He was resting peacefully, and I began
to see about getting out of here.  I decided to call St. George and
see if I still had a job, but, every time I reached for the phone,
one of the girls would come in with some complaint or another.
Some examinations took longer than others, and I was still there when
Pat stopped back into check up on Sully.

     "You never did explain why you were going to kill Sully once his
leg was mended, Dr. Rose."

     "Dave, please, call me Dave.  Most times someone says Dr. Rose,
I look to see if their talking to someone behind me."

     "All right, but then you've got to call me Pat rather than Mrs.
Sully."

     "Deal."

     "Now, Dave, why did you say you were going to kill Sully?"

     I simply pointed over to the clock that said 4 PM.

     "Between getting into the van, and how long its taken me to 
check in, its a 90% probability that I don't have a job anymore."
I picked up the phone and dialed the hospital.  After a short verbal
argument with the chief administrator, I looked back over at Pat and
said, "Well, it's official.  I am now that incredible oddity, a 
doctor on unemployment."

     "So?  Surely you can get another job somewhere else."

     "Afraid not.  Once this incident gets around, no hospital
or practice will take me on, as they'll have no way of knowing when
I'm going to take it into my head to go off on something like this
again and leave them in the lurch.  Heck, I don't even have enough
in the bank to pay my rent at the end of the month, let alone open
a private practice of my own.  I'm afraid that when I followed
that gent you sent to fetch me I threw everything I had worked for 
out the window."

     "Yea, right, sleazeeball.  Blame it all on me, a man who happens
to be out for the count and unable to defend himself.  An invalid,
crippled and restricted to his bed with a broken leg.  Some friend
you are, pal."

     "And a cheery good evening to you to, Sully.  I see that 
marriage hasn't dulled the edge of your scintillating personality."
     "I like you to Dave.  Now what was this you were saying about
being out of work?"

     So I wound up repeating the whole sorted story for Sully's
benefit.  Where upon he pointed out a solution.  The house's doctor
had died, and they had 5 days left to find a doctor, or close.  I 
replied that I wasn't sure if I wasn't going to be doing even more
harm to my reputation by working here.  Sully countered with the 
reminder that this was probably the best offer I was going to find
in while.  I would get Room, board, and a decent budget, as well as a
small stipend a week for myself.  I conceded the point by pointing
out that I had never been able to talk him out of anything before
this, and well, I wanted to keep a close eye on a man who could break
his leg in a brothel.  It took me less that 24 hours to arrange
my affairs and move in, and I've been here ever since.

     
       There is a fine art to managing a brothel in the big city,
and being the staff physician is not a dull job either.  Sully's,
as the place was called, was open 24 hours a day, and ran 3 shifts,
more or less, of 7 girls upstairs and 14 down, plus another 5 on 
Outcall status at any given time, on the average.  That's 78 girls
to check for VD on a Bi-weekly basis, plus another 24 or so employees
in the forms of bouncers, cooks, barkeeps, and the like.  That's
over a hundred people in my care, folks, which made for busy days and
nights.  Then, of course, there was running the place.  Sully 
actually didn't make a dime off of the girls, the girls keeping
all that they made, and simply "renting" the cribs they used.  
Between that, and what they got charged for Room and board, just 
covered the bills of the place.  Where Sully's real profit was made
was that he acted like a bank for the girls, giving them a better
interest rate than a bank while investing it in the stock market.
He made enough that way for him to live comfortably.  Sully's is 
actually bigger than most people think, as all the girls and most of
the hired staff live on the premises.  Sully bought the building
right behind his, too, and converted it to rooms for the rest of the
staff.  With no commuting times anymore, this left most of the staff,
especially Sully, with more free time on their hands than they 
expected.  We grew into one big extended family, with various 
interests, and it just so happened that Sully's was writing.  He'd
jot down stories from time to time, while he had free time. 
 It was jokingly suggested, that since he had to spend most of his 
time in bed with his broken leg, that why shouldn't he use the time
that he was going to be laid up writing that next Great American
novel that he kept mentioning.  Well, Sully took it to heart, and 
from then on, whenever you walked past Sully's room, you could her 
typewriter keys clacking away.

     I guess you could say that was the real start of all this, 
because once I let Sully up out of bed, he would love to talk about
the novel.  Even Pat commented that Sully was more interested
in this book than her, which was a real major undertaking indeed.
And he would talk about it to anyone who would listen.  And well,
I guess he talked about it to one person to many.  I had let him out
of bed two weeks before, and he was moving around right sprightly
with the crutches from the office.

     Anyway, he was down at the base of the stairs to the back 
brownstone, and I was just pulling up in my late model Lincoln with
this tux I had rented.  (I had an invitation to a very Posh party
thrown by a classmate of mine who went straight into private practice
right out of school and had made a killing with plastic surgery.
[And  yes, I was dreading it like the plague, but couldn't find 
anyway to get out of it.])

     Anyway, there I am getting out of the car when I noticed these
two big gentlemen, who looked a bit like linebackers, dressed in 
black, pointing a parabolic at Sully from where they were sitting
in the little sidewalk deli across the street.  I thought it was 
weird, but didn't think nothing of it, until they hurriedly hid the
mike when Sully stopped taking to John the B, the derelict that kept
passing Sully the latest word out on the street.  That information
was what gave Sully such an edge when it came to dealing with the 
shadier facets of life in this town.  He used that information,
along with the sneaky side that I knew so well, to always stay on the
right side of the law, and trip up those who wanted to get a piece
of his action. 
 I went on up to my offices, from which I could keep an eye on them
without seeming obvious.  Sure enough, as I watched Sully talk to a 
couple of other folks that passed by, while Sully waited for the 
laundry delivery.  Every time he stopped to talk to someone, the 
parabolic mike s pointed at him, and hidden when he was alone.  And
if that wasn't bad enough, as soon as Sully went back inside, they
packed up and left.

     Now, granted, that such is not very sociable behavior, but just
eavesdropping on someone is NOT against the law.  But it did get my 
curiosity up, and I kept kind of discrete eye out of the window.
Sure enough, whenever Sully was out, someone was over there watching,
and when he wasn't, they left. 
 It was sort of like a tag team event too, as it was never the same
two guys twice, and that was suspicious to my book.  So, when Sully
stopped by to get the cast off, I told him what I had seen.  I also
told him to be careful, as I didn't want to have to put a cast on 
anything else of his.  Sully simply smiled and asked if he could now
go about his normal duties in life.  Just then came a knock on the 
door, followed by the unbidden entry of two rather large hoods in 
black.  Sully went to stand, but the hood pushed him back into his 
chair.

     "You John Sully?"

     Once again my sense of discretion dropped off line.  "I'm 
Sully," I said.  "He's David Rose, the staff Physician.  What can I 
do for you gentlemen?"

     "We've been sent by our boss to se if you wouldn't consider
selling your manuscript to us."

     "And why is your boss so interested in my little story?"

     "It makes him nervous.  He don't like people making' him 
nervous.  So, he wants to by it off of you."

     "But it's not finished yet, and I couldn't possibly sell it to 
any publisher before its finished."
 
     "That's the point.  The boss, he don't want no one writein'
a book like yours.  He wants to see that it don't get published."

     "And if I don't sell?"

     "Then you have two choices.  Stop writing' or something 
unfortunate might happen to you, if you catch my drift."

     With that, his hand moved in a blur, and the tingling of glass
from my diploma frame sounded clearly in the silent room.

     "I see," I replied, nervously clearing my throat, "but I'll need
sometime to think about it."

     "You've got 24 hours, Mr. Sully.  If we don't hear from you by 
then, well, we tried to reason with you."  He turned and walked back
to the door, pausing for a moment to comment over his shoulder,
"Oh, and by the way, Doctor Rose, your a Lousy actor."  And then,
they were gone.

     I was brought back to reality by Sully slapping me around again. 

     "I see you haven't changed either.  Nerves of steel under fire,
and then you collapse when it's all over.  And your still not a 
convincing liar."

     "Yea, well, NOW do you believe me?"

     "I must admit that your suspicions do seem to have a bit more
weight to them than before, but this is nothing I haven't dealt with
before."
     "Sully, this isn't a game here.  If those thugs don't get what
they were told too there gonna kill someone!  Namely YOU!!"

     "I can handle it.  I've got aces up my sleeve that not even Pat
knows about.  I can handle anything these thugs even think of dishing
out."

     "So your not going to let them scare you?"     

     "NO.  And you know that deep in your heart that you would do the
same thing in my shoes.  This mysterious boss of theirs is just 
another bully, Like back at Mason High.  And we took care of them,
didn't we?"

     And the worst part about it was, the more the fear reflex faded,
the more I could see that Sully was right.  I did, however, remind
him that we had a lot more at risk here than when we were in high 
school, and got him to promise to at least keep Pat informed of 
events.  And so it was that Sully just stopped talking to everyone
about the novel, and there was only one reason to continually
fight the urge to find a nice big rock somewhere to hide under.

     I Know for a fact that med school had done nothing to improve
my sense of courage. After all this time, the one biggest reason
did not break and run that day, and found a nice safe life was my 
mysterious midnight caller.

     I had attributed the increase in sexually oriented dream 
material to the fact that I was now working in an establishment
where sex was the stock in trade.  That, plus the fact that I still
wasn't scoring made me just chalk it all up to incredible 
frustration.  Most people think that working in a brothel means that
your able to score with the girls, especially the house doctor,
Right?  Wrong.  Because the girls do what they do for a living,
it means that they don't have to go out looking for physical 
gratification like everyone else.  Indeed, it means that they only
'put out' for someone who would make their hearts go twang, or 
created an incurable itch of the libido.  Add in the fact that I have
never seen a female patient fall for her doctor, and the fact that
you tend to consider your co-workers like a second family, well, lets
just say that I had a better chance of seducing my aunt.

     So, there I was, incredibly frustrated, and little time off to 
try and find it to boot, anyway, my lack of scoring became something
of a topic of interest.  Meanwhile, I just gave up in frustration
and would spend my time off sitting in the 2nd floor den getting
drunk and moping about it.

     But, when I woke up the morning of the day that Sully was given
that ultimatum, I found some evidence that changed all that.  My 
reproductive member was cover with lipstick, and I had a incredibly
vivid dream about oral sex the night before.  And even to my hung 
over brain, it occurred that maybe not all of my dreams were 
necessarily just dreams.  Ever since that, I've been trying to figure
out who it is, but I never have found her out.  It's like whoever
she is is part Santa Claus, as I have never had a visit on any other
occasion except when I was in a deep slumber.  Of curse, I sleep like
a log most of the time anyway.  But now that you know about them,
I wont mention them anymore, except for the occasional update where
they occurred in the sequence of things.

     It was about this time that I got Sully to agree that I did need
some help in order to get my job done.  So he hired two nurses and a 
couple lab techs.  But I didn't get an increase in time off, as in 
return I was now also the councilor in charge of the retraining
program that taught the girls skills that they could use on the 
outside, so that they didn't have to do this all their lives.  Which
brings us to how this confirmed chicken wound up stopping the first
real attempt to "convince" Sully that it was in his best interest
not to publish his book, which was now not just a book but a 
screenplay too.

Anyway, I was downstairs, in the "reception" room of the Main floor,
dropping off some test results to two girls who had took them just
before they went to work.  Because I was down there in my job as 
councilor rather than doctor, I, of course had my guidance notebook
with me, a loose leaf three ring job.  It was early afternoon,
in that quiet period between the end of lunch and the after-work
crowd, and I was going over the results with one of the two, the 
other being tied up at the moment.  (She was the house's bondage
specialist).  So there I was when a half dozen tough looking drunks
came blasting through the door like Sherman through Georgia.  The 
bouncer on duty moved to intercept them, but was attacked and 
rendered unconscious.  By this time Pat was able to move in and try
to intercept them, only to get the front of her dress torn and 
herself shoved out of the way.  At that point, once again my 
incredible Stupidity took over.  I Popped open the rings on the 
notebook and shouting, hurled it at the intruders.  Everybody
was temporarily blinded as papers went flinging everywhere,
while I, acting on adrenaline, grabbed a vase from the end table and
hurled it into the fray, all while making a dive roll for the bar.
I  grabbed the sawed off Double barrel shotgun kept behind there for
emergencies, and, popping up, fired both barrels.  The Remaining
hoods broke and ran, leaving me with a sight that will haunt me 
forever.  As the papers settles they reviled the bodies of two hoods,
plus cerise and her client lying there covered with blood.  Suddenly,
my lunch became buoyant and the last thing I remembered was puking
my guts out into the trash can behind the bar.

     When I came to, it was dark out, and Pat was sitting by my side.
Noticing the pained look on my face, she put an arm on my chest and
told me that it as all over.  She told me that the john was O.K.,
just covered in blood from one of the hoods.  Cerise was in serious
but stable condition down at St. George hospital.  Then Sully dropped
by and thanked me for my quick actions.  I told him to stuff it.  He
pointed out that I was a hero.  I bitterly replied that I was a 
healer, not a killer.  He replied that there was no way I could have
know, and not to kill myself over it.  I asked him what of the two 
hoods that had been left.  He told me that one was in police custody
and the other was in the morgue.  He then hushed my profuse apologies
about cerise and simply but grimly told me that I was going to be 
taking shooting lessons, along with the rest of the support staff.

     There is one sound that will always cause my blood to run cold,
for some it is the grating sound of fingernails on a chalkboard,
but of I it is the piercing sound of a fire alarm going off in the 
wee early hours of the morning.

     As a case in point, not more that two months after the shooting
incident, just as I was getting over the emotional shock, I was in 
bed asleep.  I was dreaming peacefully when said terrifying wail 
pierced my dreams, and well, my reaction was similar to that of a 
claustrophobic finding out he was stuck in an elevator.  My room is 
right next to the fire escape you see, and when that alarm went off,
I was out the window and down three flights before my brain informed
me that I had not been alone in bed.  And off course as I had gone
to bed alone, that meant it could only be one person .. my midnight
caller.  A overused sense of chivalry and shame mixed with a sense
of curiosity propelled me back up those three ladders to see if she
was all right, and she must have been, For when I returned there was
on one there.  I cant be sure though, but no one passed me as I 
returned back to my room, so I do know that she did not exit via the
fire escape, as I hadn't passed anyone on the way back up.

     Five minutes later, everyone had been assembled outside the 
house.  Everyone was O.K., and only minor damage done, as a quick
thinking bartender had grabbed a knife and had slashed all the 
waterbeds he could find on the first floor.  All that water coming
down from the floor above put the fire out light a light, so by the
time that the fire department arrived, it was all over except the 
mopping.  That, and patching a dozen waterbeds.

     The Fire?  Arson.  Deliberately set in hopes of destroying
everything, or at least convincing Sully it was cheaper to do as he 
was told.  Sully looked even grimmer, and grumbled about what this
was going to do to his premiums.  He arranged for a better security
system to be installed, along with a closed circuit TV system, which
he simply brushed off as "something that I had beet putting off for
a while anyway."  I couldn't say just how much those two events had
affected him, but he seemed much more obsessed with finishing
the novel.  He would put as many as ten hours a day in on it, while
still managing the girls money and the house, and still  getting
some sleep here and there.

     Apparently, whoever it was that was after Sully started to feel
the heat after that, as we intercepted 5 more break-ins / arson 
attempts in the next two months, at which point our adversary
took a break to regroup.  My visitor took to leaving pieces of 
lingerie behind, and I took to trying to catch a glimpse of her with
a video camera.  All I got out of it was A shadowy picture of someone
in a black hooded cloak, who entered and would disable the camera
... when I found a tape in the machine at all.

     By the start of the dead period, Sully finally finished the 
novel and the screenplay.  So, feeling victorious, we decided to 
shoot the screenplay ourselves.  Which is how they finally did catch
us with our pants down.

     We had just finished filming from the script, and while it was
not the  greatest, it showed that with good actors and proper 
production values, it was going to be a major moneymaker.  We were
showing it in the staff lounge, in the back brownstone, when the bad
guys made their move.  We were watching the tape when there was a 
crash of glass, and suddenly there were a dozen or so gentlemen
in black entering through the room.  One of them started to grab the
tape from the VCR, and I went into action.  The other hoods jumped
to stop me and everyone else jumped to stop to stop them, and the 
battle was joined in earnest.  I managed to get clear and give chase
to the gent with the tape, and while I didn't catch him, did recover
the tape.

     But it was a case of wining the battle and losing the war, so to
speak, as when I got back to Sully's and past the barricades,
I found out that while we had been stopping the theft of the tape,
a second contingent had dropped into Sully's bedroom from above and
made off with Sully himself.  The police said that there was nothing
to do but wait, as the kidnapers would have to make their demands
known sooner or later.  Pat allowed them to put a tape recorder
on the phone, and to keep a man there with her until the kidnappers
called, but refused to let them do anything else.
     
     Pat and I must have aged a year for each of the 24 hours it took
for the kidnappers to contact us. 
 By the time the phone rang we were both in emotional tatters,
as we had all but convinced ourselves that they had killed Sully 
right off and disposed of the body before making demands of us.  I 
guess my nerves were in worse shape than Pat's, for when they did 
call, Pat beat me to the phone easily.

     Pat listened in silence for a moment and then let out with a 
blue streak worthy of a marine drill sergeant.  I let her go on like
that for a moment before gently prying the phone away from her 
fingers.

     "This is Rose.  You've got our attention.  Talk."

     The voice at the other end sounded disguised, raspy.  "Like I 
wuz saying, we've got John Sully.  Give us the manuscripts and the 
tape you made or he dies.  You have 12 hours to agree.  We will 
contact you at that time with drop instructions."     

     "How do we know he's still alive?" I shouted, but was 
disconnected before I got the first syllable out.  I looked over at 
pat.

     "They had Sully on the line when I picked up the phone.  He only
had time for a word or two before they took the phone away from him.
Asked me if I had taken my valium.  Then they took the phone away 
from him, and I just lost it, I'm afraid."

     "Calm down, Pat.  You wont be of any help to Sully as a nervous
wreck.  They gave me their demands.  Its what we expected.  The 
manuscripts and tapes for John."

     "If only I could have had more time, maybe I cold have gotten
a clue      from him."

     "Maybe he did.  Your a strong woman, Pat, and disgustingly
healthy.  Since I started work here, I haven't seen you in my office
once, and I know from your files that you always used the clinic
here.  I never prescribed any tranquilizers for you.  Did my 
Predecessor?"

     "No.  I never had any problems like that.  Your right, and Sully
knows that I never take them either!  He did give us a clue after
all!"

     "Yes, but its not a very good one, and we don't have much time.
I have a feeling that they are going to kill him any way, as soon as
they get what they want from us, regardless of what they say.  Pat,
you know my extreme reaction to fire alarms.  Is there anything
that gives you that sort of reaction?"     

     "Yes, there is.  Subway tunnels.  I was caught in a power 
failure on a subway train the first time I ever rode one, and I've
never been able to go into one ever since.  I take a bus or taxi 
instead."

     "Well, its a start.  I think Sully was trying to tell us he was
in a tunnel somewhere, probably an unused side tunnel, as it would
be the only safe place to hide him."

     At that point we were joined by the young detective that had 
been left with us.  He informed us that they were not able to get a 
complete trace, but had tracked it to the lower west side.  I was 
standing there listening to him theorize that maybe they had used a 
portable phone clipped into someone else's phone line, so even if we
did trace it, we would be going the wrong way. 

     While this was going on around me, I was wondering if maybe 
there was still more to Sully's message than anyone had thought
of yet.  Knowing Sully, and knowing that he would have only had a few
words, he would have done his best to make sure that we got the 
maximum information out of them. 
 I suddenly got this sick feeling as I recalled the conversation
after the first time we had been threatened. 
 Suddenly I had the feeling that Sully had been talking more to me 
than Pat.  I excused myself from the conclave and headed for my 
office.  Locking myself in, I went back to the medications cabinet.
Sure enough, back in the back of the uppermost shelf, was a small
opaque bottle labeled "Valium".  Inside was a map of the basements,
which showed a secret room, and how to open it.  Keeping the 
information to myself, I went down, and found a well equipped weapons
locker, along with a city map and a Radio direction finder.  I made
some quick selections from the guns there, and stopping by the 
lounge, grabbed a bottle of Old' Granddad on my way out to my car.
     It wasn't a totally unseen departure, as Pat and the cop came
rushing out the door just as I pulled away.  I sighed to myself and
knew that this had better work, or they were going to accuse me of 
being in cahoots with the kidnappers.  But I knew that getting sully
back now hinged on myself, and myself alone. 
 And the first things I had to get was information.  It took three
hours, to find John the B,and the bottle of Ol' Granddad to get him
to talk, but got the information I needed.  A bunch of thugs had been
seen moving about on old warehouse on the lower west side.  He 
couldn't tell me exactly where, but I had a feeling that I didn't
have to worry about that.  I headed in that direction, and soon 
started to get a signal on the RD finder.  I was right!  Sully Had 
bugged himself.  I noted the bearing and marked it on the map. 
 I then drove to another site and got a second bearing.  One more and
I had the general location of the signal.  It took another hour to 
get the signal localized to a specific warehouse, and to get close
without being seen. I quickly armed myself from the hardware I had 
brought with me, and slipped Inside to do some checking on foot.  I 
managed to get inside the building unseen, and quickly found the room
were Sully was.  Discretion prompted me to then retreat and call Pat
from the first phone I found.  She told me that the kidnapers
had moved the time up to twenty minutes from now, and the exchange
would take place at the train depot.  I gave some words of 
encouragement to pat, and some hints for how to handle the exchange
before I got off the phone.  Once more I infiltrated the  building
and returned to a spot where I could watch the door to the room where
sully was being held.  I saw no preparations to move him being made,
and assumed the worst.  I snuck up close enough to be sure of hitting
the guards, and prayed.  Those shooting lessons paid off, as the 
tranquilizing pellets struck their marks, and the guards were out 
cold before they could utter a word.  Inside of thirty seconds I was
inside and had Sully free.  Just then a tall sallow faced gentleman
stepped into the doorway

     "Doctor Rose, I presume.  I've been expecting you.  Nice job of
getting in here.  To bad you won't be leaving though, at least not 
alive, anyway."

     A gaunt skeletal hand brought a pistol to bear.  "Drop you 
weapons, Mr. Rose, or Sully dies right now."  But My response was one
off desperation.  I shoved Sully to my right, and dove to my left,
struggling to bring the assault rifle I carried to bear.  His pistol
spoke, and I felt a red heat, and was spun around.  Blackness
swirled up to great me as the floor swam into view, the chatter
of my weapon faintly heard as consciousness left me.

     I guess you could say I am real lucky, as that gentleman
hadn't shot straight.  The bullet passed through my shoulder just 
above the lung, and so I was out of the hospital two weeks later,
while my adversary now resided in the morgue.

     When I was released from the hospital, it was to a world 
changed.  Unlike the first time, dreams of this shooting did not 
haunt me at night.  Even the guilt of the time I shot Cerise by 
accident had faded, to where I no longer felt a traitor to the 
Hippocratic Oath.  And even more changes were discovered that night,
as Sully's closed for a night for the first time in a year, as 
everyone turned out for my Welcome home party.  It was a gala affair,
as all the people I had treated for the last six months returned
the favor and fussed over me.  The girls flirted with me and teased
me about still being single, and the drinks ran strong and free.  Not
willing be upstaged, and in fact showing perfect timing, Sully made
that much anticipated announcement that a publisher had purchased
the manuscript.  This he followed with the announcement that he had
a deal to go to California and direct the Screenplay himself.  This
bombshell caused a wave of silence to sweep across the room, as all
realized that meant that the house would be closing, and we would
all be going our separate ways.  In this moment of somber 
realization, when we all realized just how much everyone here meant
to everyone else, Sully let us off the hook by announcing that he was
not going to sell or close, but instead was going to turn it over to
his new partner - me.  Sully's like that, but I really wish he had 
told me prior to that time, as I almost had a heart attack when he 
sprung it on me there at the party.  Sully never did move back here,
instead opening up another place in Beverly hills, and I really can't
complain about the work as manager.  I still have my mysterious
midnight visitor, and now just accept her for what she is, and no 
longer wonder who.  It's been a full life, and there was the time I 
got lonely and visited Sully on the set of his latest picture,
but that is a whole other story altogether.  Maybe I'll have it ghost
written ...